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Modernizing operations at an iconic building
Located near Jungfernstieg, the ABC-Bogen is one of the most distinctive office properties in Hamburg’s city center. The fully glazed, eleven-story curved building was designed by architect Hadi Teherani in the late 1990s and includes around 14,750 square meters of rental space and 140 parking spaces. VALUES Real Estate acquired the property in 2021 and made ABC-Bogen a pilot project for ESG-oriented, AI-supported building operations in an existing building.
To support this effort, Johnson Controls integrated its OpenBlue Net Zero Plus and Equipment Performance Plus solutions into the existing building automation system. These solutions automate energy and ESG reporting, analyze operational data and support facility management teams with AI-powered fault detection, prioritized actions and performance-based dashboards. As a result, KPIs related to energy, operations and equipment performance become more transparent, making measurable savings in energy consumption, reporting and FM services possible.
Impact
Overcoming challenges
VALUES Real Estate develops and operates properties in Germany and Austria with the goal of preparing buildings for the long-term requirements of climate-neutral cities. The ABC-Bogen in Hamburg plays a special role in this effort: As the headquarters of Google Germany, the property not only had to be operated reliably but also had to meet clear requirements for ESG and ISO 50001 compliance. Transparency was therefore a central goal of the modernization from the outset.
The technical starting point was a building automation system that was around 25 years old. Its hardware and software needed to be updated to continue ensuring operational reliability. At the same time, operational inefficiencies had become apparent: Energy was not being used optimally, ESG and reporting processes were still handled manually and FM services were not yet sufficiently linked to real building usage and operational data.
Two innovative solutions
Johnson Controls enhanced the ABC-Bogen’s building operations with two solutions from the OpenBlue portfolio. OpenBlue Net Zero Plus automates utility, energy and ESG data and supports reporting through a user-friendly dashboard. The solution also provides AI-powered insights into consumption patterns in relation to factors such as space occupancy and weather data.
OpenBlue Equipment Performance Plus also supports technical operations with automated fault detection, control strategies and prioritized work orders. This allows measures to be evaluated more precisely and facility management services to be better aligned with actual operating conditions.
OpenBlue provides VALUES Real Estate with automatically generated compliance and performance reports, dashboards that quantify the financial impact of faults and benchmarks against similar buildings. Thanks to this new digital layer, ABC-Bogen’s operations are more transparent and operational decisions can be made based on data.
Future-ready results
The impact of OpenBlue is already measurable: Since the platform was integrated at ABC-Bogen, annual energy cost savings of more than €15,000 have been identified. These savings alone enabled payback within 18 months. In addition, reporting costs were reduced by around €12,500 per year and facility management service costs by around €20,000 per year.
For VALUES Real Estate, ABC-Bogen is therefore a blueprint for further rollout across the property portfolio. In the future, the digital layer is expected to complement the modernization of existing building automation systems in additional properties.